The president took a turn as far as the clerk's counter and back. The lobby was deserted, everybody having gone to welcome the first train into Copah. "You seem to have North against the wall," he said when he came back. "Yet, for the sake of--of, well of his wife and children, he must have even-handed justice. I must insist upon that." It was the most lovable thing in the irascible old man--his undying loyalty to a man in whom he had once believed. Adair slew the last hope with reluctance. Drawing a thick packet of undelivered telegrams from his pocket, he handed it to his uncle. "Justice is the one thing Mr. North is most anxious to dodge," he said gravely. "When the news of the catastrophe reached him, he resigned by wire--to New York; not to you--got his physician to order him out of the country, and left Denver between two days. Ford has sent Frisbie to Denver to hold things together, and there has been a number of removals--subject, of course, to your approval. You will find the history of all these minor happenings in those telegrams, which I have been collecting--and holding--until you had leisure to look them over." "Where is Mr. Ford now?" asked the president crisply. "He is not very far away; in fact, he is up-stairs in the sitting-room of our suite with Aunt Hetty and the two Van Bruce ladies and Alicia. Incidentally,--quite incidentally, you understand,--he is waiting to be asked to help you out in that mining deal." "Fetch him," was the curt command; and Mr. Colbrith sat down to wade resignedly through the mass of delayed wire correspondence. * * * * * What remains of the story of the Pacific Southwestern is a chapter, as yet unfinished, in the commercial history of the great and growing empire of the West. Of the rush to the Copah gold field; of the almost incredible celerity with which a stretch of one hundred and forty-odd miles of construction track was opened for the enormous traffic which was instantly poured in upon it; of the rapid extension of the line to a far western outlet; of the steady advance of P. S-W. shares to a goodly premium: these are matters which are recorded in the newspaper files of the period. For the typically American success of the Southwestern's dramatic upward leap to the rank of a great railway system, President Colbrith has the name and the fame. Yet here and there in the newspaper record there is mention of one Stuart Ford, "our rising young railroad magnate," in the unashamed phrase of the _Copah Megaphone_, first as the president's assistant; later, as first vice-president and general manager of the system, in the Chicago headquarters, with Mr. Richard Frisbie as his second in command on the western lines, and Mr. Charles Edward Adair as comptroller and chief of finances on the executive committee in New York.